[quote]I'd choose Alamy over PD any day - I've over 600 with PD and about 800 with Alamy and my Alamy sales are heaps better than PD (albeit still slim!)
Agree completely with Barrie Harwood - the PD rating system is ridiculous as are most of the photo requests - 80% are amazingly obscure - check out their site & look at recent requests.
I upload to Alamy regularly but have stopped with PD until they drop the ratings system.
Ian.[/quote]
Is the Alamy ranking system any better...seems overly complicated. Obviously some people are managing to exploit it..but how is another matter.

Quote:I'd choose Alamy over PD any day - I've over 600 with PD and about 800 with Alamy and my Alamy sales are heaps better than PD (albeit still slim!)

Agree completely with Barrie Harwood - the PD rating system is ridiculous as are most of the photo requests - 80% are amazingly obscure - check out their site & look at recent requests.

I upload to Alamy regularly but have stopped with PD until they drop the ratings system.

Ian.

Is the Alamy ranking system any better...seems overly complicated. Obviously some people are managing to exploit it..but how is another matter.

It's not about exploiting it Dave but using it.
At it's simplest, it's intended to make sure us photographers don't use the 'spray and pray' technique of key wording. You will get 'penalised' if you images contain words that bear tenuous relevance to the search terms used that resulted in the image being 'offered' to the buyer.
This is going to be a bad example but back to the school uniform. If you had a picture of a kid in school uniform and in the very background (but not a significant part of the image) was a man or woman, your keywording might have included the word adult. In this case, the adult really is insignificant but it's inclusion as a keyword would have resulted in the image appearing. This sort of thing affects your ranking (I said this was bad example but hope you get what I mean). They are trying to make the system work for buyers (relevant images only being shown) and for sellers (people with relevant keywords get their images shown to the buyers on the earlier pages).
One of the images in my portfolio (the [b]Adder[/b]) has sold a few times with Alamy but it was only when I was revisiting my keywords that I noticed I had obviously cut and paste some spurious and totally unrelated key words that would most definitely affect it's rank.
It's not a perfect system but better than what they had before (i.e. nothing)

It's not about exploiting it Dave but using it.

At it's simplest, it's intended to make sure us photographers don't use the 'spray and pray' technique of key wording. You will get 'penalised' if you images contain words that bear tenuous relevance to the search terms used that resulted in the image being 'offered' to the buyer.

This is going to be a bad example but back to the school uniform. If you had a picture of a kid in school uniform and in the very background (but not a significant part of the image) was a man or woman, your keywording might have included the word adult. In this case, the adult really is insignificant but it's inclusion as a keyword would have resulted in the image appearing. This sort of thing affects your ranking (I said this was bad example but hope you get what I mean). They are trying to make the system work for buyers (relevant images only being shown) and for sellers (people with relevant keywords get their images shown to the buyers on the earlier pages).

One of the images in my portfolio (the Adder) has sold a few times with Alamy but it was only when I was revisiting my keywords that I noticed I had obviously cut and paste some spurious and totally unrelated key words that would most definitely affect it's rank.

It's not a perfect system but better than what they had before (i.e. nothing)

There was a chap on one of the Alamy forums last week who sold an image for $6000.00 By his own admission it was an average shot (of Windsor I think) which he thought was unremarkable. I'd leave what you have on with Alamy and gradually add to it as you go. My 'favourite' landscapes never sell on Alamy - I'm always surprised by the ones that do!
Stick with it - the sales will come with time,
Ian.

There was a chap on one of the Alamy forums last week who sold an image for $6000.00 By his own admission it was an average shot (of Windsor I think) which he thought was unremarkable. I'd leave what you have on with Alamy and gradually add to it as you go. My 'favourite' landscapes never sell on Alamy - I'm always surprised by the ones that do!

Hi Ian
I agree with you about scenics. It's not really a big selling 'stock' subject from what I can see. Have you tried anywhere else for those (RSPB Images comes to mind as they like this sort of thing)

Hi Ian

I agree with you about scenics. It's not really a big selling 'stock' subject from what I can see. Have you tried anywhere else for those (RSPB Images comes to mind as they like this sort of thing)

Cheers Barrie - I'll check that out. I'm submitting to a more local stock site that may be more representative of my landscapes too. I figure having them all at Alamy won't hurt but to put the local landscapes in a more specific library would be the way to go too.
Ian.

Cheers Barrie - I'll check that out. I'm submitting to a more local stock site that may be more representative of my landscapes too. I figure having them all at Alamy won't hurt but to put the local landscapes in a more specific library would be the way to go too.